The Missouri Board of Education is recommending a new assessment tool state wide for early childhood development. The Desired Results Developmental Profile, created by the California Department of Education, is an assessment that will help determine a child’s learning needs before he or she enters kindergarten.

The assessment will not only give teachers an idea of how their student is progressing, but it will also help give the state a better idea of how ready kids in Missouri are for kindergarten.

The State Board of Education elected a new president and vice president for the 2013-2014. Stan Archie and Peter Herschend have essentially switched roles.

Stan Archie, newly appointed president served as vice-president since 2006 and is a senior pastor at Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in Kansas City. Newly appointed vice-president, Peter Herschend has just ended his presidential term after 11 years. But according to Herschend, the State Board of Education is more of a team effort.

Missouri’s Board of Education approved a tentative plan for revised standards in schools across the state. The updated standards provide schools with guidelines for educator evaluation systems, which is required in school districts to help assess teacher performance.

Now, the board takes a variety of factors into account when evaluating student achievement such as standardized test performance, graduation rates and socio-economic breakdown of the districts. The new criteria are a more evolved version of the old standards.

State education officials could step in quicker to assist failing Missouri school districts under legislation backed in the House.

Districts that lose state accreditation currently are given two years to improve before the state officials can intervene. The new legislation removes the waiting period.

When the state Board of Education revokes a district's accreditation, it then would decide whether to set conditions for the local school board to remain in place or determine when an alternative governing system for those schools would take effect.

Eleven states have been issued waivers from some provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, but Missouri was not one of them. But as Maria Altman reports, the State Board of Education is trying to change that.